Phenom II X6 Compatibility, Over 170 Boards Supported at Launch
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 27, 2010 11:07 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Phenom II X6
- Motherboards
Earlier today AMD announced its Phenom II X6 processors. One vendor even started offering them at a huge discount if you're willing to put up with a mail in rebate. The X6 is quite possibly the most affordable route to tons of threaded compute power. If you do a lot of video encoding or offline 3D rendering, for $150 you can't beat the deal TigerDirect is running on the 1055T. And it looks to be a beast of an overclocker.
The new X6s are supposed to work in all Socket-AM2+ and Socket-AM3 motherboards, all you need is a BIOS update. Many of you asked for a performance comparison between AM2+ and AM3 with the X6, but I quickly realized that none of the boards I had around the lab supported the chip. I decided to do a quick survey of all of the motherboard manufacturers to see who was ahead of the game on enabling Phenom II X6 support:
| AMD Phenom II X6 Support at Launch | ||||||||
| ASRock | ASUS | Biostar | ECS | Gigabyte | MSI | |||
| Number of AM2+ Boards Supported at Launch | 10 | 19 | 7 | 16 | 4 | 11 | ||
| Total Boards Supported (AM2+/AM3) | 28 | 37 | 23 | 26 | 43* | 22 | ||
ASUS and Gigabyte lead the charge with 37 and 43 boards supported at launch. The star next to Gigabyte's number means that you'll have to do some digging to find all of the Gigabyte boards with support. The CPU supported list only lists 10 boards but if you dig through Gigabyte's BIOS pages you'll find a lot more. In terms of older AM2+ boards, ASUS and ECS support 19 and 16 respectively. AMD tells us that the priority is to enable AM3 motherboards so over the coming weeks we'll see the AM2+ numbers climb.
Have any of you pulled the trigger on a Phenom II X6 purchase? What board are you pairing it with? Leave your experiences in the comments!
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kcsaw - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
Im going to get a new gigabyte 890GX board with the 1055T .. should be enough for 3DS rendering.tremtastic - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
Do you have any details of Dell compatibility?We've got a few Optiplex 740 Athlon X2s around the office that we would love to upgrade.
Belard - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
That, would be up to Dell... which is not likely as they prefer to sell whole systems.Check out their site or contact that tech support for compatible CPUs. If Dell starts selling such CPUs for the same series, then a BIOS upgrade is all you would need.
Your Dells should have AM3 motherboards (DDR3) which is best, but these work in most AM2+ boards.
This is why many of us BUILD our own computers.
tremtastical - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
Thanks Mr Patronising.I build my own computers, I currently run a Phenom II x4 965.
I was talking about the machines we have at work. How many companies do you know of that build their own machines?
Taft12 - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
Many smaller companies build their own machines when it's appropriate (such as mine).The 740 does not support any 45nm AMD CPUs, so the chances of x6 support are zero. Business desktops don't run any apps that would benefit from 6 cores anyway. Finally, why are you asking us and not Dell?
Amoro - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
The company I work builds their own machines. We rarely go OEM. We're a game development studio though so that's probably why. We have to test on many different types of machines.Fenixgoon - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
Can't wait for it to come. Upgrading from an Intel E4300!LuxZg - Sunday, May 2, 2010 - link
I'm thinking about the same, going from my old E4400 to one of the X6 CPUs.. but I somehow think it's not gonna be anytime soon since I've got another major purchase to do as well (HD cam) :/insurgent - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
I have a 1090T paired with MSI 890GXM and G.Skill Ecos.. so far so good, no problems and a great upgrade from my Q6600 :DBFitzroy - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - link
I'm going to be using mine with an MSI 790GX Platinum.I'll wait till Bulldozer before moving to a DDR3 board.